Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery: A Visitors Guide

The Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery is so cool! It is the only elephant seal rookery in the world that is easily accessible, free, and open to the public year-round. The rookery is about seven miles from San Simeon on California’s famous Highway 1.

When we pulled into the Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery on a cool late February morning, the sun was barely up, and only a few other cars were in the parking lot.

My wife and I had driven three hours in the dark to get here and were very excited. We’d visited Año Nuevo State Park a few months earlier, but our timing was slightly off. We only saw maybe three or four dozen elephant seals. We visited about a month early. Not now, though; we knew we would see thousands of elephant seals!

Visiting the Elephant Seal Rookery

Getting out of the car, you could immediately hear them! We headed towards a boardwalk built over the beach, where thousands of seals were living their best lives. The first view was quick. Only a few steps onto the boardwalk, we were greeted with —a mixture of females with pups and a few big bulls here and there.

We made our way down the boardwalk and enjoyed all of the vocalizations. The juveniles playing were especially noisy. These are big mammals! Adult bulls can weigh 3,000 to 5,000 pounds and be up to 16 feet long, and females can weigh 1,200 pounds and be 12 feet long.

We were there at the very tail end of the birthing season, which peaks in January. From March to April, pups are weaned. You can tell the very young pups because they have a shiny black coat that turns silver after about six weeks. The pups spend a couple of months developing swimming and diving skills in the rookery before going to the ocean on the first forging trips.

“They are so cute!” my wife squeaked in excitement. “Look, those two are cuddling!” “This is truly amazing!” I responded. “I can’t believe how few people are here.” It was true. It took us about 15 minutes to make it to the end of the boardwalk, and we had only seen a few other people. Heads up, it would not take 15 minutes for the average person to walk the boardwalk. Time adds up fast when you take about a thousand elephant seal pictures.

Elephant Seals were once nearly extinct.

It was crazy to think in the 1900s, northern elephant seals were thought to be extinct. They were hunted to near extinction for their oil-rich blubber, which was used to make oil for lamps and lubrication.

In total, we spent about an hour on the boardwalk. Much longer than needed or how much time most people spend. That said it was totally worth it. I highly recommend arriving early. We drove by later after taking a tour of the nearby Piedras Blancas Lighthouse and the parking lot was nearly full.